1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to storage area networking using the Fibre Channel protocol. More particularly, it relates to connection of fabrics in storage area networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
The scaling of dynamic Fibre Channel fabrics is a challenging problem. Currently there are compatibility concerns when switches from different manufacturers are used. A defined interoperability mode can be used, but this results in a loss of many of the performance improvement features that would be available in a single manufacturer fabric. As a result, a user is often locked into using devices from a particular manufacturer relatively early in the development of the storage area network. This limits the user from selecting devices from other manufacturers, even though the devices may be more cost effective or have features not available from the legacy manufacturer. It would be desirable to interconnect devices from different vendors without using interoperability mode and its resulting performance limitations.